Laughter over Siri’s struggles with Scottish accents

The Los Angeles Times reports that the iPhone 4S has become a top seller in Scotland despite its voice feature’s inability to decipher the accent of Robbie Burns, Sean Connery and Montgomery Scott.

“What’s the weather like today?” Darren Lillie said hopefully into his iPhone recently here in the Scottish capital, in a demonstration for an American reporter. Lillie, 25, is Edinburgh born and bred, and his thick accent shows it.

Siri thought for a moment, then decided it best to repeat what it thought it heard. “What’s available in Labor Day?” it asked.

Several YouTube videos document the phenomenon. This Scot’s effort to “create a reminder” has gone viral with over 140,000 views. (Note that Siri has had gender reassignment surgery a male voice in the United Kingdom.)

And this Weegie realizes that his worldwide audience can’t understand his (mildly dirty) Scottish talk any better than Siri can, so he uses subtitles.